Lubbock office opens
for defense of
poor in capital
murder cases

Lubbock and Hale counties will soon have a new capital murder trial each. And it may not be long before other West Texas communities get similar cases.

If the accused cannot afford a lawyer, instead of getting a court-appointed defender who may lack the experience or the expertise, the defendant will be represented by an attorney whose specialty is capital punishment cases.

The West Texas Regional Public Defender for Capital Murder Cases, a Lubbock-based agency whose mission is to represent indigent defendants facing the death penalty, has opened its doors.

"We're already accepting cases," said chief public defender Jack Stoffregen, a Lubbock attorney who was hired in October and took over the agency in mid-November. "I've got one in Lubbock County, one in Hale County and possibly one in Ector County."

The office with 85 counties under its jurisdiction - from Dallam in the Panhandle to Mills in Central Texas - was created in August thanks to a $2.7 million grant Republican state Sens. Robert Duncan of Lubbock and Kel Seliger of Amarillo secured in last year's legislative session.

The state will pick up the Regional Public Defender's tab for the first year, but the participating counties will gradually increase their share of the costs. After 2012, they will be on their own.

Capital murder cases often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute and defend. The office will help small counties from having to shoulder all those costs themselves.

It will also improve the quality of defense, possibly reducing appeals, another lengthy and costly process.

Although Stoffregen said he is still in the process of hiring and the last staff member won't come aboard until July 1, his office does not anticipate any problems, much less turning away cases. In all, the office will have 11 staff members, including four attorneys and two investigators.

However, the opening of the Regional Public Defender's offices comes at a time when capital punishment is, once again, under scrutiny thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court.

No death row inmate has been executed since late September when the high court agreed to consider whether the three-drug combination Texas and 13 other states use in lethal injection executions must be switched to a single drug.

The court heard the pro and con arguments Monday, and the ruling is not expected until late spring. Moreover, even if the court rules in a Kentucky case that the current method of executions is not cruel and unusual punishment, the earliest that executions are likely to resume is in the summer.

The death penalty also is in the spotlight because last month New Jersey became the first state to abolish it since the high court restored it in 1976, a repeal hailed by capital punishment foes. In addition, last year state legislatures in Maryland, Montana, New Mexico and Nebraska debated abolishing it. So far none have done it.

Stoffregen and David Slayton, Lubbock County's director of court administration who was in charge of setting up the Regional Public Defender's office and of hiring Stoffregen, said regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on the Kentucky case, the role of the Regional Public Defender's office won't be impacted.

"I don't know that it will have a lasting impact," Slayton said. "The Supreme Court is just considering whether the current method of execution is appropriate. That's all."

If anything, said Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals and the highest-ranking jurist in the state, regardless of how the high court rules, the Regional Public Defender's office will play a key role in the state if the death penalty remains under closer scrutiny.

"The defendants will get the best possible legal representation they can get," Keller said. If there is insufficient evidence against them, they will be exonerated. If they are found guilty, it is because there is no doubt about their guilt and that would reduce the likelihood of lengthy and costly appeals.

Keller knows firsthand about the passionate debate the death penalty generates. On Sept. 25, before the death penalty moratorium went into effect, she was harshly criticized because her office closed at 5 p.m. while attorneys for Michael Richard, a convicted murderer, were trying to file a last-minute appeal. Keller declined to comment on the controversy.

Even death penalty critics agree that no matter how the Supreme Court rules on the lethal injection method of executing prisoners, it may not have an impact on the West Texas Regional Public Defender's functions.

"The political leadership in Texas will never do the right thing when it comes to the death penalty," said Amarillo attorney Jeff Blackburn, director of the Innocence Project of Texas at the Texas Tech School of Law, which investigates wrongful convictions.

"Even if the court mandated a change in the law, the governor would call a special session and they would take care of it right away," Blackburn said. "We are getting guys out (of death row) all over the state because the system is fundamentally broke."

Despite what critics say, Robert Spangenberg, president of Boston-based Spangenberg Group, a consulting firm specializing in helping local governments improve their indigent defense system, said public defender offices like the one in Lubbock help tremendously in improving the quality of defense that poor defendants get when facing the death penalty.

"This is important in a state like Texas with so many small and rural counties that otherwise could not afford to provide adequate legal representation to a defendant facing the death penalty," Spangenberg said.

A capital murder trial costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and in the end, a small county could face financial hardship and the defendant might not get the legal representation he needs, especially if he's innocent, Spangenberg said.

With the Regional Public Defender's office, small and rural counties in West Texas do not have to worry about costly trials and the defendant knows or should know that he or she will get the best legal representation an indigent defendant can get, he said.